Category Archives: involuntary childlessness

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It’s something no one wants to think about when they are just starting out on fertility tests and treatment, but we know that IVF doesn’t always work. Even in the best case scenario, an individual treatment cycle is more likely to end with a negative pregnancy test than a positive one, although cumulative success rates are much more heartening. Perhaps if we didn’t shy away from the statistics, it would make unsuccessful IVF easier to cope with.

At fertility information events, there is often a reluctance to include any mention of IVF not working, and that doesn’t help fertility patients. We wanted to include a session on this, and on living without children at the Fertility Forum in London on March 30. We wanted to give an opportunity to hear some of the strong and powerful voices of women who are living without children, and how they have found peace and happiness. This session isn’t exclusively for people who are approaching the end of their treatment – it’s just as important for those who are still going through tests and fertility treatments to allow them to see that treatment not working doesn’t have to be the end of happiness.

I’ve met all of them and they are a pretty fabulous bunch – don’t be afraid to come and hear what they have to say, no matter where you are on your fertility journey. Organised by patients and bodies representing all the professionals in the field, the Fertility Forum also includes talks on a huge range of other fertility-related topics with many of the UK’s leading experts. Come and join us in London on March 30 for a day of accurate, unbiased information in a non-commercial setting with no promotions or sales pitches. The Fertility Forum is all about evidence – and you can get tickets here.

New research has been investigating how people react to unsuccessful fertility treatment and how best to them. Although such comparisons are difficult to make, going through unsuccessful fertility treatment is thought to have a worse impact on your mental health than divorce and is almost comparable to the impact of bereavement.

When research participants were asked to share their experience, they talked about an intense grief made of profound pain and feelings of loss, sadness and emptiness, which was sustained over time and only very progressively tended to diminish and become bearable. They also said that it was hard to stay connected with the people around them who have children and to discuss their situation with others, and this resulted in feeling very isolated. In addition, most people perceived to be abandoned by their fertility clinics and expressed a need for psychosocial support.

We now know that with time, around nine in every ten people are able to let go of their desire for children and rebuild a happy and fulfilling life. What we haven’t know, is what the things that helped those people to come to terms with their unmet desire for children.

To investigate this adjustment process, Dr Sofia Gameiro from Cardiff University worked with the patient support charity Fertility Network on an online study aimed at answering two key questions. First they wanted to find out whether this grief and the adjustment process is experienced by everyone who is unable to have the children they wanted or is unique to those who had had fertility treatment. Second, they want to investigate the mechanisms which helped people to adjust and could be used to support others.

There were 420 responses to the survey and the vast majority were women with an average age of 35. The survey results showed three key things that help people come to terms with their unmet desire for children;

Making meaning of the experience

Accepting the reality

Refocusing life on other fulfilling goals

The results from this study are in the process of being written up for publication and have been crucial to the development of educational and supporting materials that Fertility Network UK is making available in its More to life website, which is specially dedicated to support those facing the challenges of childlessness. The materials will be launch on Tuesday 30th October and can be accessed here.

I’ve just finished reading an interesting book by Vivienne Edgecombe called Already Complete – Beyond the Myths of Childlessness which is about finding peace about a future without children. I first met Vivienne when I worked for the charity Fertility Network UK, and asked her to be one of the speakers at a day-long conference I organised for More to Life, the part of the charity which supports those who are living without children. Vivienne gave an amazing and truly inspiring talk about how she had found happiness despite living with involuntary childlessness, so I was excited to read her book.

Vivienne believes that our feelings are governed by our thought processes. Relating this to involuntary childlessness, she explores the idea that how we feel about this is entirely down to our thoughts and that once we see this, we can free ourselves from our thoughts and stop their impact on our feelings. It’s an interesting theory and she puts forward a number of key myths about childlessness which she aims to show are no more than myths. She takes these apart, explaining that they are far from inevitable truths but that the pain we may feel is more to do with the way we believe our thoughts about them. By deconstructing our thoughts, she believes we can free ourself from them. I would be really interested to know how this resonates with those who may have recently stopped treatment or who are in the early days of exploring life without children when they have wanted them. The central theme of Vivienne’s book is that no one needs children in order to be complete as we are already complete, whatever our situation.

There’s an interesting article in the Daily Mail (yes, really…) about ‘reproductive harassment’ after actor Jennifer Aniston spoke out about being judged and repeatedly questioned about when and whether she is going to have a baby. As she is now 49, this seems a somewhat insensitive question, and yet the pressure on her to reproduce has been kept up by the media for many years. It’s bad enough feeling that pressure in your everyday life as a normal (non-celebrity) person, but imagine how it must feel to see your childlessness discussed by people who know nothing about your individual situation in the global media.

The article explains that this kind of questioning is most often aimed at the woman in a partnership or at single women, and yet people would rarely consider cross-examining a single man in his thirties about when he is going to get round to having a baby or suggesting that he ought not to leave it too late.

As Jennifer Aniston has pointed out, women without children are often judged and misunderstood. She has now hit back saying that maybe her purpose on this planet isn’t to procreate, and that maybe there are other things she is meant to do. Her words will resonate with many of those who have experienced involuntary childlessness, but who have gone on to have very happy and productive lives without children. Check out Lesley Pyne or Jody Day if you are looking for inspiration.

Last week, I had the honour of interviewing Lesley Pyne about her new book, Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness, at her book launch. Lesley went through six rounds of IVF, and spent many years feeling defeated by the experience of living without children – but eventually realised that stuffing her grief into a box and trying to keep a stiff upper lip wasn’t working. Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness is Lesley’s guide for anyone experiencing involuntary childlessness as she takes you through the process that allowed her to discover the happiness on the other side. There’s no short cut to this, and you have to let yourself experience the grief and sadness to come out the other side, but Lesley is a living testament to the fact that this works – and that there is joy to be found,

It was great to see so many people there for the book launch, including the team from Fertility Network UK (Lesley is pictured here with Fertility Network UK Chief Executive Aileen Feeney) and fellow author Jessica Hepburn.The guests included many of Lesley’s friends from More to Life, the part of Fertility Network UK which works with those who are living without children. It was a testament to those lasting friendships that Lesley – and many others – found through the organisation to see so many of the group Lesley first met when she first joined Moe to Life still there and offering their support.

Lesley’s motif is a butterfly and the tables of books were also covered in piles of beautiful butterfly biscuits, carefully colour-coded to match Lesley’s book cover and website.

Lesley works as a coach, supporting others through childlessness, and you can find her guide to a more fulfilling life in the book Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness which is available in paperback and for Kindle, and you can buy it via Amazon.

It’s one of those things people don’t even want to think about when they’re going through fertility treatment – what might happen if it didn’t work, ever? Could you really be happy if you didn’t end up with a baby? What would you do if all that time, effort, money and emotional investment led to nothing? Would your life ever feel fulfilled and enjoyable? Could the overwhelming sadness go away? I want to tell you about someone who is a brilliant example of the fact that life after IVF treatment can be both fulfilled and enjoyable. She’s called Lesley Pyne, and I first met her when I was a trustee for the charity which is now Fertility Network UK. Lesley was one of my fellow trustees, and had joined as she was involved with the section of the charity for people who were involuntarily childless known at the time as More to Life.

Today, I met Lesley for the first time for a while and it struck me that she looked about 10 years younger than she did when I last first knew her – which means she must look about 20 years younger than she really is! Her eyes were bright and shining, and her zest for life was almost palpable. Lesley, who always seemed to be making an effort not to stand out when we were fellow trustees, was dressed in bright colours with electric blue nails. She is happy, she is making the most of the good things in her life – and she has just written a book explaining how she went from feeling devastated by unsuccessful treatment to this confident, happy woman who gets the best out of her life – it’s due to be published in June and is called Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness.

It strikes me as we talk that Lesley has embraced something we could all learn from – living for the moment, focusing on the positives and making an effort to enjoy what we have. I haven’t read Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness yet – but she explained that it contains her story and those of a number of other women who have come out the other side of involuntary childlessness to find fulfilment. She says it is a journey, and it can be hard along the way, but that there is life beyond childlessness, there is more to life – and if you need help along that path, keep an eye out for Lesley’s book when it comes out in June.

A research team from Cardiff University are are looking for people who have either not been able to have as many children as they would have liked, or who have not been able to have children at all, to take part in a survey about adjusting to this. They hope that the findings can be used to help with support for those who have not been able to have the family they had envisaged.

This study has ethical approval from the Ethics Committee of the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. It takes 25 minutes to complete the survey, and if you want to enter your email address at the end you can be put into a draw to win one of four £50 vouchers. Here’s a link to the survey if you are interested https://cardiffunipsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_73WpnrBsh3laWVf

For anyone who is facing a future without children, there is a free webinar which may be of interest later this week. In support of National Fertility Awareness Week, Kelly Da Silva, who set up an online community called the Dovecot to support people who are living without children, will be running the webinar on Thursday 2nd November from 7pm – 8pm.
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The topic will be ‘Dealing with Involuntary Childlessness’, and Kelly will be taking questions after an initial input in this topic where she will be discussing the key challenges of childlessness including, shame, disappointment & the impact of childlessness on our daily lives. You can find out more and details of how to join the free webinar on the Dovecot Instagram page here.

Thanks to Stephanie Phillips for starting the first World Childless Week which runs from 11-17 September and aims to raise awareness of the many millions of people around the world who are childless-not-by-choice.

When Stephanie realised that she was not going to be able to have children, she gradually started to link up with others in similar situations through an online group and gradually realised that the peer support she received was making a huge difference to how she felt about her life.

She realised that there was no focus for people who were childless in the Fertility Awareness Weeks in the UK and USA, and needed something that didn’t focus on happy endings after fertility problems but on life without children. That’s why she decided to start World Childless Week. Her aim may have been to help a few people know that they are not alone, but it has done far more than that already and has really helped to raise awareness over the last few days. You can find her website at http://www.worldchildlessweek.com

You may have already seen quite a bit about the week on social media, but I hope that Stephanie’s brilliant awareness-raising idea continues to be a huge success and starts to increase understanding and empathy for those who are childless-not-by-choice. Thank you Stephanie!

Other sources of support for those who are childless-not-by-choice include Jody Day’s Gateway Women and Kelly Da Silva’s the Dovecot

Some of you may remember that we have been supporting a researcher, Megumi Fieldsend, in her search for participants for her work on involuntary childlessness. Megumi is now putting out a final call for men who might be willing to help her study on “life without children – lived experience of a man who wanted to be a dad”. She is aiming to carry out her final interviews by the end of July so if you know someone who might be a potential participant, could you ask him if he would be interested in taking part in Megumi’s research project?

There are set criteria for participation, and if you have any questions about the study or want to check about the criteria, please do get in touch with Megumi who will be happy to answer any questions. You can contact her by calling 0778 026 3685 or by emailing her at
megfieldsend@gmail.com

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Fertility Matters is written by Kate Brian who has been through fertility problems, tests and IVF treatment herself. The website gives reliable information, advice and support to anyone who is having difficulties getting pregnant. Read more